Thursday, April 10, 2008

Don't Drink the Pink Kool-Aid!

The Red Sox are starting to get on my nerves. Not the team, but the idea of the team. Or more accurately, the idea of the team that its marketers and every media outlet in this increasingly hick town keeps trying to cram down my throat.

Look, people, root, root, rooting for the home team does not make a person special. It makes them normal. Being a Red Sox fan is an accident of birth and/or geography. It is not membership in some sort of horsehide mystery cult no matter what Ken Burns thinks. It is no better or worse than being a Padres fan, except that many night games are far colder.

Red Sox Nation. Nathan Cobb owes society a lot for coming up with that bull. Jerry Remy is a fine announcer when he's not the Rem-Dawg. Awarding/Selling World Series rings to fans is a violation of the natural order of sports. The fans didn't get a single Colorado Rockie out. They were just happy when it happened. It's like buying a man a present because his wife gave birth.

As a capitalist, I have no problem with Sox management wringing every nickel they can from the customers. As long as the customers don't mind, what's the beef? But there are limits. Baseball is great entertainment. Rooting for a team is a life long rewarding emotional experience, even for Phillies fans like me.

Separating customers from their dough by telling them they're special because their Red Sox fans, and that the Red Sox themselves are only worth noting because, you, the fan, has graced them with your support is just sickening. It also leads to the following hilarious incongruity.

After many years of telling fans they were special because they rooted hard for a team that hadn't won a World Series in 86 years, the Sox are now marketing themselves to those same people by telling them "You're special. You root for a dynasty. It's won 2 World Series in 90 years."